Matthias Politycki - Next World Novella

Schepp was gasping for breath. Schepp had things to do — suddenly everything seemed important. Once he had managed to fold Doro’s hands — they eluded him and came apart again and again, until (I’m sorry, Doro, I don’t want to hurt you, you’re being so difficult today), until he finally forced them to grasp each other — and once he had put a cushion under her neck, she lay there, the familiar filigree figure. He did not dare to straighten the corners of her mouth, he did not dare to press her jaw shut, and he definitely did not dare to close her eyes. He covered her small, stubbornly twisted body — when had he seen it as closely as this during the last few years? — up to the shoulders with a light throw so that she would not be cold.

Now he felt better, now she would be pleased with him. He pushed back a silvery strand of hair from her forehead and buried his head in the hollow of her throat. Hadn’t he been wanting to do that for a long time? He pressed his lips to her cold skin just where his favourite mole lay on the other side of her neck. One last time, he considered and rejected the idea of calling a doctor — if he had failed Doro at the moment of death, he would at least keep vigil beside her. If he sat down here and now with the manuscript he could at least share her last hours in retrospect.

He sat on the edge of the chaise-longue , carefully sliding a little further back, then a little further back again, pushing Doro’s legs up against the upholstery. For a while the fly buzzed somewhere or other, then silence returned and with it came a sense of space, as if the things all around were moving further away from him, right back to the walls. Schepp was sitting beside his wife and amidst that great silence. Now finally he could read in peace.

No one knew whether Marek had been a heavy drinker before Hanni started waitressing and drove us all crazy, every last one of us. Judging by what we heard about him at the Blaue Maus, seems highly unlikely. After all, he lived in a 2CV Dolly delivery van, on the move practically the whole time, and had to watch how much he drank. The cool thing was, he had a water container on the roof of the Dolly. A pipe ran down from the container into a sawn-off aluminium bread bin welded into the wheel housing. That was his wash basin. Imagine that! He liked to park at night in alleys or backyards where the coppers wouldn’t roust him out in a hurry — a guy like that very likely couldn’t even show an official document saying he was unemployed, no fixed abode neither, you can bet the coppers would’ve liked to put him behind bars. His long hair, torn old army surplus jacket, patched jeans didn’t help either — typical dropout, just the sort the law likes to take in for a body search. On the other hand, although we couldn’t really believe it, on the other hand Marek, of all people, claimed to be engaged to be married, and when he showed his narrow gold ring with an inscription inside, PETRA — Let’s do it — 12.4.1971 , we all had to admit that it was serious, I mean more than a whole year, incredible length of time!

The following evening, again, we couldn’t believe it. Marek, secretly and deep down — a bourgeois? However this ominous fiancée of his, who none of us had ever seen, had gone off to Greece without him to some island to be an au pair? Wolfi told us, being the manager here, spreading rumours at the bar was kind of his duty. You got so many rumours about Marek that we eventually gave up asking questions and believed anything of him. Apparently his parents came over from some eastern country. Apparently he was a petrolhead and good at tinkering with stuff. Apparently he drove all the way home from Athens with a broken clutch cable, changed gear just by listening, got a great reputation with some of us that way. Not with the girls, though. Not the ladies, at least not with Hanni. She laughed at him outright when she brought him another beer, ‘There you go, pet, no laying it on too thick!’ While with Big Jörn, who always made a palaver out of putting her tip where she least expected it, with Big Jörn she used to thank him with a cheeky, ‘So I guess that gets you a night with me’. Which Marek of course heard, even if he pretended he was too busy rolling a fag.

Actually we didn’t know much about him, he didn’t say much himself. He only talked about his Dolly. How he bought it with the rusty floor and no MOT certificate and all for 250 marks. How he fell more in love with it every time he hand-picked a spare part for it off a scrap heap and built it in. And how he finally painted the Dolly bright red with a roller. Always something to be welded, greased, cleaned, like in any household, he said. He also claimed that now his Dolly not only featured a proper mattress, 120 by 180 centimetres, but also a duvet, a spirit cooker, a whole lot of candlesticks, oh yes, and the wash basin had an outlet, he had all he needed. Wasn’t so good on rainy days when he was in the middle of town, he said, everything getting wet, you had to shit in a bucket too. On those days you were glad to get into bed, and then …? Well, what he did then we’d no idea, some claimed he wrote poetry, maybe he read or listened to Jimi Hendrix on his fifty-watt speakers that he’d built in even before the heater and the cooker.

Or maybe he just lay there and thought of Hanni. In which activity, God knows, like I said, he was not alone. The Blaue Maus had always been a great place to crash out, known for it all over town, round about midnight everyone who’d already had a skinful somewhere else was there, ready to make a night of it. But then Hanni came as waitress — as matey with everyone as if she was another guy. And the way she went around in cut-off jeans, T-shirts much too small for her, that didn’t make things any better. She’d push her way through the customers, teasing them while she served the drinks — ‘Fancy a nibble with that?’ — and if someone tried getting back at her, with her freckles and her bold way, making insinuating advances, she’d send him packing, throwing the guy out herself. ‘Is his big brother here too? He’d better leave as well.’ That on its own was worth a visit to the Maus for all of us.

Life at the Maus was never boring. What with the place being full of alcoholics, jazz trumpeters, philosophers and other such colourful figures, and from two or three in the morning everyone talking to everyone else across tables and up and down the entire bar. In case of doubt there was always Mutt. Because Hanni, as cheerily as she joked, cursed or knocked back tequilas, was basically the opposite of flirtatious. If someone made the slightest move behind her back, suggesting never mind the pretzels and peanuts, he could fancy nibbling something very different, she’d immediately swing round, brown eyes with all those tiny gold flecks in them putting on a fireworks display, hand on her hip, asking so as we could all hear, ‘Who was it wanted a nibble, then?’ And when someone had ordered nuts or cigarettes, reckoning he was in with a serious chance, he’d often take his disappointment out on Mutt, Hanni’s dog, a mongrel who regularly hung out with us. Did the old boy know who the kicks he often got under the table at dawn were really meant for?

Hanni. Acting so matey and on a level with everyone meant she shielded herself from any problems. Seemed like she didn’t much care for men. Big Jörn, who late at night would behave as if he could have her at the drop of a hat, couldn’t even provoke her into contradicting his claims. As for Marek, the sort who admired her from afar, she mocked him: ‘Still a bit wet behind the ears, are we?’ But he had his devious way of getting closer to her. Through Mutt. Marek treated the dog with particular respect, like an old gentleman. When everything was open-ended chaos around four or five in the morning, he’d move close to the dog to protect him from the worst.